UrbanIxD: From Ethnography to Speculative Design Fictions for the Hybrid City

Abstract

This paper presents research in the field of Urban Interaction Design which seeks to understand how people's personal, emotional relationships with urban places could potentially inform the design of new technological devices and services. A Speculative Design approach is taken by creating Speculative Design Fictions informed by the data gathered using the ethnographically-informed Walking & Talking method. However, creating the crucial link between themes in the data corpus and possible future scenarios for Speculative Design Fictions can be challenging. Building outwards from a sophisticated understanding of the approach, this paper presents a case study which focuses on the step-by-step process of designing and creating this crucial link for a Speculative Design Fiction in the form of a short film, using design techniques such as Tactics for Ambiguity, PACT-analysis and SCAMPER.